What I've Learned: Senator George Voinovich (R, Ohio)

The eighteenth in a daily series — Esquire's historic collection of wisdom from members of the 111th Congress...

My mother always says, "To thine own self be true. That when you look in the mirror, what does it say to you?"

Power is empowering others.

I participate in the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum. This is an international group in Europe, mostly NATO countries. They were talking about the U.S. coming forward with more money for international defense, and I said, "We can no longer be the sugar daddy of the world. We've been taking care of everybody in this room for sixty years. But the fact is that last year we borrowed forty-one cents out of every dollar we spent." A hush went over the room. They just couldn't believe it. The United States of America borrowed forty-one cents on every dollar spent?

Most Popular

I'm more concerned about our future than at any time in my lifetime. Let me tell you why. At speaking engagements, when I ask people the question, "How many of you in this room have a better standard of living than your parents?" almost everyone's hand goes up. Then I ask, "How many of you believe that your children's standard of living is going to be better than yours?" And only a few hands go up. So there's a sense of fear and uncertainty in this country, and I think that we need to get back to basics.

When I was mayor, I controlled my schedule. I was the orchestra leader. In every organization that I've been in, I've always tried to become a leader and a president. But when I came to the Senate, my goal was not to become majority leader. My goal was to be first chair in a couple of sections of the orchestra.

This country really runs on a sense of decency, fairness, transparency, and the discipline to do what's right. These basic principles are like the Ten Commandments or the Boy Scout oath. Law. You follow these things and everything's fine. When you start not doing that then you start getting into real trouble. Basically, people in the home-loan business started making money hand-over-fist. The actors should have realized that this was too good to be true, but they just went along with it because of greed. They abused the system and now are paying the price. They're all complaining about this financial regulation. I didn't vote for it. But they have no one to blame but themselves.

What people fail to realize is what the immigrants brought over here was family. Familia! The fundamental values of a good family are the basis of what America's about. The more we get away from the basics, the worse things are going to be.

I really believe that if we said to illegal immigrants: "If you have a job and you're responsible and so forth, we will allow you to go home to your country and come back to the United States to work." If we did that, I think at least half of them would say, "That's great."

The other part of the immigration issue is we don't want to cut off our nose to spite our face in terms of bringing in people from around the world that we need for our businesses. If you look at some of the biggest research companies in Ohio today, you're going to find a huge percentage of people from India, China, and other countries. These are people who've come here and taken advantage of the economic and political opportunities to climb the ladder. We all benefit from the climb, just as we benefited from the climb of my parents. They came from the old country, had six kids, and we all turned out pretty good. And so I call it new waters, like refreshment coming into the country. I don't think enough people realize how we've benefited from that over the years.

My wife has a great influence over what I do. We'll be married 48 years, and she's been God's greatest blessing on me. I listen to her. She's the common denominator, the common sense of America.